Sports Business Journal published an articleon Monday sounding the alarm about the Los Angeles Dodgers’ plummeting local TV ratings. Last season, the Dodgers averaged 226,000 households per game telecast. This season, the average is 40,000 households.

The Houston Astros have the same ratings problem but without the benefit of a full ballpark every night. Their joint regional sports network with the Houston Rockets — Comcast SportsNet Houston — isn’t carried by any cable or satellite company other than Comcast. The situation is so dire that Comcast forced the RSN into bankruptcy last year. The dispute has now spawned additional litigation in state and federal court.

That being said, only a handful of teams have seen their average game viewership rise in the first half of the season when compared to the average game viewership for the entirety of 2013. The Yankees’ have seen the biggest bump — likely the result of Derek Jeter‘s retirement tour and the addition of Masahiro Tanaka. But the Mets, Angels, White Sox, Indians, Athletics and Padres have also seen jumps in their ratings.

For the last several years, Sports Business Journal has published a variety of mid-season and end-of-season rating information — a kind of winners and losers of ratings for that time period. SBJ relies on Nielsen’s ratings, which are proprietary and not publicly available for each team for each season or half-season. Neilsen doesn’t measure TV ratings in Canada, so we don’t have any ratings information on the Blue Jays. We also lack information on teams that don’t fall someone near the top of the ratings scale or the bottom, or haven’t seen big changes in their ratings in the last several years, like the Diamondbacks, Mariners and Rockies.

I’ve taken SBJ’s stories from the last few years and pieced together a chart showing the number of households in each team’s Designated Market Area in 2014 (as defined by Nielsen) and the average number of households viewing the team’s telecasts in various time periods. I recognize that the population in each DMA may have shifted somewhat since 2012, but not enough to undermine the value of the chart. If you want to dig into the numbers, you can find links to SBJ’s most recent stories here, here and here. I’ve separately tracked down some ratings information on the Chicago Cubs and the Tampa Bay Rays.

Team

Households in TV Market

Ave. HHS 2012 Season

Ave. HHS Mid-2013 Season

Ave. HHS 2013 Season

Ave. HHS Mid-2014 Season

Mets

7,461,030

173,000

135,000

118,000

138,000

Yankees

7,461,030

296,000

185,000

194,000

228,000

Angels

5,665,780

83,000

69,000

80,000

Dodgers

5,665,780

109,000

126,000

154,000

40,000

Cubs

3,534,080

62,000

56,000

56,500

52,000

White Sox

3,534,080

73,000

42,000

40,000

49,000

Phillies

2,963,500

168,000

113,000

100,000

Rangers

2,655,290

151,000

123,000

121,000

71,000

Athletics

2,518,900

32,000

29,000

31,500

33,000

Giants

2,518,900

113,000

104,000

Red Sox

2,433,040

153,000

163,000

173,000

128,000

Nationals

2,412,250

61,000

69,000

46,000

Braves

2,375,050

76,000

104,500

96,000

67,000

Astros

2,289,360

20,000

10,000

9,000

9,000

Tigers

1,856,310

168,000

165,000

178,000

140,000

Diamondbacks

1,855,310

Mariners

1,847,780

Rays

1,827,510

88,000

89,000

Twins

1,748,070

89,000

65,000

Marlins

1,663,290

32,000

18,000

27,000

Rockies

1,574,610

Indians

1,387,950

58,000

79,000

81,000

86,000

Cardinals

1,254,530

103,000

101,000

109,000

93,500

Pirates

1,181,540

75,500

72,500

94,000

75,000

Orioles

1,095,240

52,000

66,000

71,000

Padres

1,080,880

22,000

29,000

32,000

Royals

941,980

36,000

54,500

61,000

Brewers

916,950

47,000

41,000

54,000

Reds

906,210

78,000

71,000

70,000

58,000

We can see a few trends that cut across big and small-market teams. Winning generally boosts ratings. Competing for a spot in the postseason kicks up ratings in the second half. Losing hurts ratings. A lot. This is similar to what we’ve recently seen with attendance — a closer temporal nexus between winning and changes in fan behavior. Previous studies had shown that winning tended to increase attendance in the following season.

At the same time, MLB Advanced Media’s CEO Bob Bowman told reporters in 2013 that MLB.tv at At-Bat had together experienced 20% year-over-year growth and had reached three million subscribers. But that’s all we know. We don’t know where those subscribers are, what and when they listen to games, or what and when they watch.

And then there’s the social media angle. Several sites have attempted to measure a team’s popularity and the intensity of its fans by using Google Trends (Five Thirty Eight) or Facebook likes (NYT’s The Upshot). But there are many questions raised by these analyses which haven’t been answered (this critique does a good job), which makes it difficult to know exactly what to do with the data.

The local TV ratings provide useful information, but they are only a snapshot, and even then, just a piece of the larger puzzle that is fan engagement. The other pieces include attendance, radio listeners, social media, and merchandise sales. Right now, only the attendance figures (or, more accurately, tickets sold) are publicly available for all games and all teams. We should work toward a metric that incorporates all of these data. But we are not there yet.

Wendy writes about sports and the business of sports. She's been published most recently by Vice Sports, Deadspin and NewYorker.com. You can find her work at wendythurm.pressfolios.com and follow her on Twitter @hangingsliders.